The 2023-2024 El Niño caused the most severe drought ever recorded in the Amazon rainforest, along with heat waves and fires. But it also significantly affected the emissions of biogenic volatile organic compounds through the Amazon rainforest’s vegetation and their uptake by soils.
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Researchers used radiocarbon to show that organic carbon in dryland topsoils is much older than previously estimated, averaging about 2,000 years. However, when dry soils are wetted, even old carbon is decomposed and respired by microbes.
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Using more than 80 million observations from plant identification apps, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry have produced a detailed picture of fine-scale climate and soil conditions for 326 European cities.
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Dr. Marion Schrumpf, long-standing scientist at MPI-BGC, is moving to Halle University (MLU) and Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) as professor of “Ecology of Agricultural Ecosystems.”
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Extreme climate events endanger groundwater quality and stability, when rain water evades natural purification processes in the soil. This was demonstrated in long-term groundwater analyses using new analytical methods.
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